


Castle on a Cloud

by khiori



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: (by which I mean a lot), Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Buckle up, F/M, Platonic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Timers, Team Dynamics, gets a little angsty, they might be soulmates but who says they have to like each other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-06
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-02-28 10:31:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2729081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/khiori/pseuds/khiori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Shit," she gasped, backing away into the safety of her van. "I got a fucking dark suit. This cannot be right. This is a mistake. Right? Tell me it's a mistake."<br/>.......<br/>Skye has been waiting for her soulmate since she was ten years old, and she's less than pleased when it turns out he works for the organisation she hates--which is only fair, because he's not exactly overjoyed with her being an immature, rash, reckless hacker.</p>
<p>Or, the one in which they're soulmates, but that doesn't mean they like each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Canon compliant (ish) in that it follows along with the episodes, but there are extra bits, bits taken out, and things completely changed.  
> DISCLAIMER: any lines you recognise (there are a few, especially in the earlier chapters) are not my work.  
> This is unrelated to any of my other AoS fics.  
> I will promise you regular updates.  
> (I don't always keep my promises.)

The best day of Skye’s childhood was the day after her tenth birthday, when the nuns took her to have her timer implanted. She’d been counting down the days on the small chart she’d made and hidden under her mattress, the date circled in red sharpie. She’d been Mary Sue, then, and all Mary Sue wanted in the world was the absolute certainty that, one day, someone would love her completely. 

Sister Heidi was the one who took her—gripping Mary Sue’s small hand in hers, holding her back when she darted forwards, nearly vibrating with excitement.

“Calm down, child,” Sister Heidi had scolded her, freeing her hands to grip Mary Sue by the shoulders, holding her still in front of the reception desk.

The woman behind the counter had the kind of lipstick that made her lips look like brittle red plastic. She smiled down at Mary Sue, leaning over the counter slightly. “Hello there, young lady. Do you have an appointment?”

“Yes,” Sister Heidi replied. “Mary Sue Poots.” _Rude,_ Mary Sue thought. The plastic-lip lady hadn’t been talking to Sister Heidi.

The receptionist smiled again and gestured them towards a propped-open door. “You can go right through,” she invited them.

This time, Sister Heidi didn’t try to stop Mary Sue from tugging her through the door. They hurried through into a small room with a comfy-looking, reclining chair.

A young woman with died-blonde hair greeted them. “Hello there, I’m Doctor Hersher. Would you like to hop up on the chair, Mary Sue?”

Short for her age, she had to clamber up, upsetting the neat plait in her hair. She looked up at the doctor, curls falling in her eyes. “Can we do it now?” she asked, breathless with nerves.

The doctor chuckled, picking up a clipboard and a pen. “Just a second, honey, we need to go over some questions.”

Mary Sue fidgeted in her seat. She’d read all about timers, knew how they worked (as much as anyone understood) and what they did. “Fine then.” She acquiesced. A short cough and a sharp look from Sister Heidi let her know she’d pay for being rude to the doctor later. She shrank back into the seat.

“Okay then. How old are you?”

“Ten years, one day.”

“Have you ever been under general anaesthetic before?”

“No, just local. For a broken arm,” she added before the doctor could ask.

Doctor Hersher nodded, made a note. “That’s fine then. Do you have any questions for me?”

Mary Sue shook her head quickly.

“You know what your timer will do?”

“It will have two readings; the first will count down until the day I meet my soulmate, the second will show his pulse. If he doesn’t have his timer yet, it won’t count down.”

Doctor Hersher gave her an approving nod, tapping the bubbles out of a syringe. “Someone’s done their research! Lie back, honey, and close your eyes. You’ll wake up in ab—”

**

Mary Sue’s wrist itched when she woke up, and it took her a few seconds to remember why.

Ecstatic, she scrambled to see her wrist. There, embedded into the slightly red skin of her left wrist, was the face of her timer.

_13 years, 11 months, 2 weeks, 4 days, 6 hours, 31 minutes, 12 seconds—11 seconds—10 seconds_

She blinked, shaking herself free of the trance she had fallen into watching the seconds tick by. Beneath the timer a small, sky-blue circle expanded and contracted in time with her soulmate’s pulse. It was steady and even, slower than hers.

A brilliant, giddy smile spread across her face; if her soulmate felt the same way she did, then for the first time in her life—someone was looking forward to meeting her.


	2. Who are you, really?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to let everyone know, this story is also posted over on FF where my username is MoreColourfulMoniker

Ward exchanged a glance with Coulson. He could hear the target on the other side of the van door taunting S.H.I.E.L.D, her voice rising with each word.

"She's enthusiastic, you have to admit," Coulson said wryly.

Ward shrugged and pulled a pair of handcuffs from his suit pocket. Coulson pulled open the van door— _not even locked_ , Ward noted disapprovingly—and gave the girl inside a pleasant smile.

"Hey. What up?" She said sheepishly.

Ward made to jerk the opaque, black bag over her head, when he met her eyes and froze. He felt his chest tighten, and from the way her hands went to her abdomen, the hacker girl felt it too. He could see the timer on the inside of her wrist flashing the exact date and time it had just frozen at.

"Shit," she gasped, backing away into the safety of her van. "I got a fucking dark suit. This cannot be right. This is a mistake. Right? Tell me it's a mistake."

Coulson looked at Ward as if he expected him to take over the conversation. When he stayed silent, Coulson smiled benignly and turned to the girl. "We're with S.H.I.E.L.D., miss. I'd appreciate your co-operation in accompanying us now."

"This from the guy who was ready to drag me away in handcuffs?" She responded incredulously.

"Actually, that was Agent Ward's job. I don't think you need to worry about that now."

 

**

 

Ward got through the car ride back to the bus entirely on autopilot. He didn’t say anything to his soulmate—which balanced pretty well, since she refused to even look at him. It was the sort of thing Garrett would have condemned as weakness, but Coulson just seemed to find it mildly amusing.

Coulson led her through the bus and into the interrogation room with a gentle grip on her upper arm. He sat her on the far side of a small metal table and removed the hood.

“You guys are making a big mistake,” she snapped, glaring between them.

He’d been waiting for her for twenty years, and she was an immature, anarchic hacker who hated his organisation and everything he stood for. “You don’t look that big,” he retorted.

“Sorry for the lack of finesse,” Coulson intervened. “Agent Ward here has had a little history with your group…the ‘Rising Tide’.”

“Really? I thought he was just bummed to find out his spankin’ new soulmate’s an unemployed, illegal hacker.” She replied smoothly. Ward had to give it to her—this girl had balls.

Coulson hid a smile. “What’s your name?”

“Skye.”

“What’s your _real_ name?” Ward demanded.

She met his eyes without reproach. “What’s yours?”

“That can wait,” Coulson interrupted. “It’s another name we need; a certain hero.”

“What makes you think I know that?”

Coulson smiled and sat opposite Skye, sifting through the files on the table. “You made a little mistake. The phone you filmed the hooded hero on had the same cryptographic signature as some of the Rising Tide posts.”

Her eyes flicked from Coulson to Ward, a dark shadow beside her. “Wow. Yeah, was that a mistake, or am I now sat in the middle of your secret headquarters? What is this, a plane?” Ward stifled a smirk at her assumption that the entire S.H.I.E.L.D. organisation operated out of one single plane. He wanted to take her to the Hub or the Triskelion just to see her face at the size of the real headquarters. “I got inside,” she continued. “And by now you’ve discovered you can’t beat the encryption on my equipment, so, you got nothing.”

“We have a fairly strong co-incidence,” Coulson told her. “You, being on the scene, right before it went up in flames? Want to tell me what my team’s going to find there?”

Ward shifted, clenching his hands into controlled fists. Something about hearing Coulson threaten Skye just didn’t sit right, no matter how empty the threat was. _Is that a weakness?_ Garrett’s voice echoed in his head. His nails bit into the palms of his hands.

“I was after Centipede. It was just chatter on the web, but then—gone. I traced the access point address back to that building.” Skye admitted. Coulson nodded to Ward, his gaze never leaving the files.

“What were you after?” Ward asked her.

There was a hard look in her eyes when she met his. “The _truth,_ ” she said. “What are _you_ after?”

“World peace,” he replied. “You pseudo-anarchist, hacker types love to stir things up, but you’re never around for the fall-out.” He ignored her incredulous look—he wanted her to understand him in some small way, even if that was just understanding S.H.I.E.L.D. “People keep secrets for a reason, _Skye_ ,” he finished, getting into her space. He was easily ten inches taller than her and he used it to his full advantage.

She stopped him with a hand on his chest. He felt her touch like a brand through his shirt. She inhaled sharply and her eyes snapped to his. “Just because you’re reasonable….and—firm—doesn’t mean you’re not an evil, faceless, government, toolbag!” There was a note of triumph in her voice when she finished her sentence, as if she was proud she hadn’t been completely derailed by his proximity.

“Just give us your guy’s name,” he sighed.

Skye glared at him. “He’s not my _guy!_ ” She insisted, angrily thumbing at her timer. “You’re my—he’s not my guy.”

“You understand he’s in danger,” Coulson said. Ward had never been more relieved to have a conversation interrupted.

Skye whirled to face Coulson. “Then let me go! Let me talk to him, _me,_ not the T1000, here.”

“No,” Ward snapped. “You want to be alone with him? That’s insane.”

“What, you’re _jealous?”_

“He’s unstable, desperate and pissed off; I’m trying not to get you killed!”

A discreet cough from Coulson brought their attention to the senior agent. He was stood at the door, a wry smile on his face. “I’ll leave you to it, Agent Ward,” he said.

The room seemed far too small without him in it, and Skye looked suddenly nervous. She backed away until her knees hit the chair she had vacated and she sat down heavily. “Uh, what actually is your name?”

“Grant.” He paced back and forth, hands clenched tightly, fighting for a handle on his emotions. He couldn’t help the swell of affection, of protectiveness he felt for Skye, as much as he tried to quash it. Perhaps even stronger was his anger; his frustration with her glib answers and irresponsibility. “What’s your superhero called?”

“ _That’s_ what we’re going to talk about? Our first conversation, alone, as soulmates? Wow.”

He pulled out the chair opposite her and sat, clasping his hands together on the table and leaning towards her. “A man with little to no control of his strength is loose on the streets. He may be highly volatile, a danger to himself and others. Cases like these are always time sensitive, so unless you tell us all you know, you could well be responsible for a young boy losing his father. Is that a good enough reason? Or did you want to talk about my favourite colour?”

Skye met his glare with one of her own, her teeth worrying at her lower lip, and _damn him_ if he didn’t find it adorable and sexy as hell even then. “You’re a dick,” she said, with feeling.

“I know.”

“His name’s Mike Peterson, and I told him to meet me at my van.”

**

Coulson was waiting for them in the command room, flicking through files on the holotable. It was a simpler model than the one in Fitzsimmons’ lab; technically just a large tablet rather than a fully functioning holotable—a good thing, because as far as Ward knew, Fitzsimmons were the only ones on the plane capable of operating the top-of-the range table they had in the lab. “I hope you had a fruitful discussion,” he greeted them.

“Mike Peterson,” Ward replied without preamble. Coulson entered the information, running it past S.H.I.E.L.D. databases until several files appeared on the table.

Skye leaned over to see what Coulson was reading and frowned when she saw a video of the hooded hero—Mike Peterson—throwing a large gas canister at another man.

“That’s not right,” she murmured. “Mike isn’t a bad guy, he just—he just needs a break.”

Coulson nodded. “We’ll be able to give him one with the information you’ve given us. Thank you.”

“How are we going to do that?”

The look Coulson gave Ward let him know he wasn’t going to like this plan. “You’re going to go and talk to him. Agent May will escort you.”

Ward shook his head firmly. “Not a chance. You can’t send a civilian into a potential combat situation—”

“May will protect her if the need arises,” Coulson said mildly.

“Plus, you don’t get to tell me what to do, Agent Jackass,” Skye muttered.

Ward’s jaw tightened. “It’s against protocol—”

“I wasn’t asking for a second opinion, Agent Ward,” Coulson shut him down, voice hard. Seeing the conflict on the young specialist’s face, Coulson frowned sympathetically. “Have faith in the team, Ward. May’s one of the best.”

One of the best she might be, but she wasn’t _him_ , and he was the only one he trusted with his soulmate’s safety. He couldn’t stand the idea of her being hurt, no matter how much she irritated him.

Skye’s hand found his arm, focusing his attention entirely on her.  “I can do this, Ward. Grant. I’ll be okay.”

He drew in a deep breath and held it, studying her deep brown eyes. “Be careful,” he finally sighed. “And obey Agent May.”

“Whatever you say,” she smiled. “I’ll see you later, T1000.”

 

**

The agent Coulson had sent to ‘escort’ Skye to her van was probably the scariest woman she’d ever been in a car with. She was starting to wish Coulson had let Ward accompany her—he might be an asshat, but she was hoping the whole soulmate thing meant they’d have _something_ in common.

When the silence became too much for her, she turned to the severe woman driving the SUV. “Hey, Agent May?”

“Yes.” May said it like a statement, rather than a continuer in a conversation. Skye shrank slightly in her seat.

“I was wondering—how come Grant doesn’t have a timer? Or, uh, you?” She added, eyes flicking the the woman’s bare wrists.

May was silent for so long Skye was about to give up the conversation as a bad idea when the agent spoke. “It’s standard procedure for specialists to have their timers removed; identifying marks like that could compromise an operation.”

“But Coulson has one—and the two scientists, Fitzsimmons.” Skye persisted.

“Coulson’s a field agent, Fitzsimmons are in SciTech. _Only_ specialists have their timers removed.”

She kind of wanted to know what specialists did, but at the same time she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer. “When you say specialist—”

“Ward’s in combat and espionage.”

“O-kay,” Skye murmured. _My soulmate’s a super spy._ “What about you?”

“I just drive the Bus.”

“But if you’re a specia—”

“ _I just drive the Bus,”_ May intoned.

Skye looked out of her window, biting her lip. Agent May was everything she’d predicted the guys in scary dark suits to be like—though the cat suit was a surprise, she had to admit.

 

**

His grandmother used to tell him that cleanliness was next to godliness, and Garrett had always said that the only gun that was going to send someone to their maker was a clean one, so he guessed Gramsy had been dead on. Either way, there was something incredibly soothing about cleaning guns. He was finishing up dismantling a sniper rifle when May’s comm connected.

Her breath has harsh and laboured, causing static to crackle across the comm line. His pulse climbed, dread settling in his stomach. “What happened?” he demanded.

“He took Skye,” May hissed.

The suppressor fell from Ward’s hand and rolled across the holotable. He heard Coulson asking May is she was okay, her reassurances that she was unharmed. Pure rage sparked through him and he slammed the rifle case shut hard enough rattle the holotable. “Where the hell is Skye?” he demanded, voice tight with barely supressed anger.

“Agent Ward, you need to calm down.” Coulson told him, voice hard. Coulson, who had ordered Ward’s untrained, unprepared soulmate into a combat situation against his advice.

“I _need_ Skye to be okay and not in the hands of a guy who’s going to blow to kingdom fucking come at any second!” Ward yelled.

Coulson grabbed his forearm. “You have five seconds before I come to the realisation that you’re emotionally compromised and kick you off this mission.”

 _Is that weakness, son?_ Coulson was right. _Garrett_ was right. _Control, Grant_ , he told himself. He stilled, measuring his breaths carefully. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said.

Coulson’s eyes were sympathetic. “I know what it’s like; to have your soulmate in danger. The absolute worst thing you can do is lose your head.”

“I know that, sir.”

“Good man. Fitzsimmons are working on something that can bring Peterson down without killing him; we’re going to need a damn good marksman. I’ve heard I have one of the best in S.H.I.E.L.D. here on my team.”

Ward nodded. “Yes, sir.” He didn’t mention that waiting for a non-lethal method was pretty damn low on his to-do list.

**

The door of Skye’s van sailed over Ward’s head and skidded to a halt some thirty metres further down the road. He looked up just in time to see Peterson grab Skye’s arm in one hand and his son in the other and tow them both into the crowded station terminal.

He sprinted after them, skidding to a halt on the station’s polished tiles, his loaded sidearm in his hand. Skye pulled away from Peterson and aimed a vicious kick at a passing man’s crotch. Ward watched him go down with a twinge of sympathy and fervently promised never to piss his soulmate off that much. He had to hand it to her—it was a damn smart strategy to remove herself and the kid from immediate danger and distract Peterson at the same time.

He fought the urge to run over to her and check her for harm, forcing himself to trust her to find Coulson.

Ward came up behind Peterson and floored him with a well-placed kick to the back of his knee. He caught Peterson in a tight headlock, one arm around his throat and the other hand at the exact point on his skull where a sharp twist would snap the man’s neck. “Look, the stuff inside you is unstable,” he grunted. “It’ll kill you, and everyone in here.”

“Who’s gonna miss us?” the centipede subject demanded, surging backwards to slam Ward’s back into a glass case. The glass shattered into lethally sharp pieces that would easily have cut into his skin if not for the protection of his heavy leather jacket.

Peterson flung Ward over his head and slammed him into the ground with dizzying force. Ward felt the breath in his lungs leave him in one stunningly disorientating second; he lay there, wheezing, for a few seconds, trying to gather himself.

He was snapped back to reality by the familiar crack of gunfire. Coulson strode over and pulled him to his feet. “I think we may have a third party,” he was saying into his comm. Ward scanned the room, pinpointing the gunman. He was aiming for Peterson, and, by virtue of Peterson’s tight hold of her arm, Skye. “He’ll be heading for the tracks,” Coulson continued. “You stay high, and I’ll go low.”

Ward was already turning away when Coulson called him back. “Only take the shot if you have to.”

How easily Coulson risked Skye’s life for this man who had done nothing to prove his worth to S.H.I.E.L.D. _If she dies because of your plan_ , Ward vowed silently, _I will tear you apart._

“Ward!” Coulson urged him. _Is that weakness, son?_

“If I have to.”

**

Ward stared at Peterson’s temple through the scope of a sniper rifle. “I have a clear shot,” he said, saw Coulson’s head twitch slightly as the message came through his comm.

His head had cleared when he’d seen Peterson emerge from the rubble alone, seen Skye safe in the gallery with May.

Coulson was edging towards Peterson, talking in the level, compassionate voice that had convinced Grant to leave his solitary, effective life to join a cobbled-together team of inexperienced, too-enthusiastic young agents. He tightened his grip on the rifle.

A flash of brown caught his eye outside the scope—Skye, running to Coulson’s side. “Fuck,” he swore, re-aligning his shot. When this was over, he was going to have an incredibly serious talk with Skye about realistic estimates of her own usefulness in a crisis situation and according risk assessment. She was going to be the death of him if she didn’t end up getting herself killed first.

“Ward!” He whirled around, hand going to his holstered side arm. Fitz was jogging towards him, a sleek silver rifle in his hand. It was unlike any gun Ward had ever seen.

“What the hell, Fitz?”

The young engineer stooped to catch his breath. “This is—the night-night rifle!” He gasped.

Ward raised an eyebrow. “This is it? The non-lethal solution?”

“Yes! Now hurry up, he looks like he’s going to blow.”

Ward hefted the gun onto his shoulder. The weight was off, and the scope was terrible—but he hadn’t got the best marksmanship scores in the entire ops academy for nothing. The shot was perfect, landing a round of whatever Fitzsimmons had created squarely in the middle of Peterson’s forehead.

Simmons jogged over to the unconscious man, examined him briefly and smiled up at Coulson. Ward saw the relief break across the Commanding Officer’s face and gave a small smile himself. Unbelievably, against all logic that existed, the man’s plan had worked.

**

Ward caught up with Skye in the SUV. It was empty except for the two of them and Coulson, May having already left for the Bus and Fitzsimmons staying behind to monitor Peterson’s transfer to S.H.I.E.L.D. custody.

Relief surged through him at the sight of Skye unharmed. “You’re okay,” he said.

She nodded warily. “Surprisingly, yeah. I told you I had it covered.”

“Next time, _please_ don’t take such stupid risks.” He sighed, buckling his seat belt.

She stared incredulously. “Stupid risks? Getting kidnapped is a stupid risk? I’m so sorry, how could I not have realised that?”

“Not that,” he snapped. “But afterwards, when you ran after him? What were you thinking, you knew he was about to blow!”

“But he didn’t,” she retorted.

“That is _not_ the point.”

“Then what is?”

He inhaled sharply and rubbed his thumb over the bridge of his nose. “You went into the field with absolutely no training and only one agent as back up. You then ran after an unstable man who was worse than a walking bomb! Did your own safety occur to you at _any_ point today? And what about the innocent bystanders you put at risk by helping him gallivant around; you could have helped him kill-”

_"Helped him to-?"_

“Please, Skye,” Coulson cut off Skye’s angry retort. “Ward’s right. You _were_ reckless today. But—” he hurried on, seeing her outraged expression. “That’s what I need you for. I need someone to think outside the box, outside the rules. I think you can be that person.”

“Sir?” Ward demanded, eyes wide and shocked.

Coulson actually smiled, the smug bastard. “The two of you will just have to grow accustomed to working together. You’re soulmates, it shouldn’t be that hard.”

Ward would have bet everything he owned that Coulson had never been more wrong.

 

 


	3. Who is he? (and what is he to you?)

Coulson was insane. He was working for a madman.

“Skye? That girl’s not qualified to be a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent,” Ward scoffed, bracing his arms against the holotable in the command centre.

Coulson was unconcerned. “Agreed. That’s why I’ve invited her on as a consultant; S.H.I.E.L.D. does it all the time—technically, Stark’s a consultant.”

“And _technically_ Skye’s a member of the Rising Tide! She hacked our RSA information—”

“Twice. On a laptop. Imagine what she could do with our equipment,” Coulson invited him.

 _Get herself into even more danger, most likely._ “I am. That is exactly what I am imagining during this frown. That, and her getting herself killed on a mission she’s not qualified to be on.”

Coulson smiled at him like he’d won a personal victory. “So this is about her safety, Agent Ward.”

“You brought me on for risk assessment. She’s a risk. To herself, and the rest of the team. She doesn’t think like us.” He said grimly.

Coulson nodded. “Which is exactly why we want her. You are one of the very best specialists currently operating in S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Ward. I’ve read your mission reports; some of your strategy work is downright genius, never mind raw skills. Skye is the perfect opposite—together, the two of you could be the best S.H.I.E.L.D. team since Barton and Romanoff. That makes me excited.”

“You already have two kids on here not cleared for combat, and now you want to add a third?” May questioned, joining the argument.

Ward shook his head, exasperated. “This is against protocol, sir.”

“I don’t care. I’m waiting for an argument I haven’t anticipated, and I’m not hearing one. This is happening—but your frown is on record.”

That didn’t make him feel much better, all told.

 

**

The two scientists greeted Skye in the cargo hold, the woman ushering her in with a warm, slightly nervous smile. Skye handed over a box of things from her van to the guy. She saw the surprised look he shot the deceptively heavy box.

“Where’s Agent Ward?” she asked the pair.

They exchanged weighted glances. In just that split second when their eyes met, Skye saw a conversation flow between them without a single word being spoken by either. Sure enough, when she glanced at the timers exposed by their rolled up sleeves, the dates matched. She felt like she was watching two speakers of a language she didn’t understand interact, and suddenly, desperately, she wanted the same with Ward. _Not likely,_ she told herself firmly. The guy might be cut pretty damn fine, but he was an emotionally unavailable asshole who actively supported just about everything she fought.

“He’s avoiding me,” she summarised flatly.

“Ward’s just getting used to—” the woman started.

At exactly the same time, the man replied, “Yes.”

“Sorry,” they said in unison.

Awkward silence stretched through the cargo hold. “Come on,” the woman began brightly, “we’ll show you the bunks. There’s only one left—”

“—it’s right next to mine—”

“—so we’d better get you settled in.”

And they finished each other’s sentences. Each other’s _thoughts_. “Which one of you is which? Agent Coulson called you Fitzsimmons, as in collective.”

They shared another look, this one a secret, intimate smile, as they reached an empty bunk. “Fitz,” the woman introduced her partner with a wave of her hand.

He nodded at her in turn. “Simmons.”

Fitz placed Skye’s box on the bed inside her bunk. “It’s great to have you here, Skye,” Simmons told her genuinely.

Skye smiled. “It’s pretty cool to be here. You’ll have to give me a full tour of your plane once we get going—I was up here before but I didn’t see much because of the _bag_ Agent Ward put over my head.” It wasn’t that she was bitter.

They nodded enthusiastically, and really, they were just too cute. “Of course! That’d be great. Are you okay here?” Simmons asked her.

Fitz continued, “We really should get back to our lab.”

She nodded, already turning away from the pair to examine her new bunk. It was certainly the comfiest space she’d ever seen on a plane. _Ultra_ business class. She ran her fingers along the soft bed sheets and noted the TV mounted on the wall. “Sweet,” she murmured.

A rap on the door snapped her attention to a visitor. Ward stood in the door of the bunk, looking distinctly unhappy. “Hey! Grant. You know, you and I, wrong foot—”

He thrust a leaflet into her hands. “Might want to read that. This isn’t like other planes.”

He strode away before she could so much as reply. A safety pamphlet. A _goddamn safety pamphlet._ “Can I trade?” she murmured to herself, closing the door if her bunk and sitting down heavily on a nearby sofa.

“Trade what?” The voice made her jump. It was Coulson, walking over to join her on the sofa.

“Soulmates,” she sighed, running her thumb along the edge of the pamphlet. “I don’t even want to trade, just return him.”

Coulson gave her a sympathetic smile. “He’s not a pair of shoes, Skye.”

“Well he sure as hell doesn’t fit,” she muttered.

“You’d be surprised how much he cares about your safety,” the agent told her.

Skye scoffed. “Oh, yeah. As much as I care about his.” But that was a lie, really, wasn’t it? Didn’t the idea of him hurt, _dead_ , choke her with horror; leave her feeling hollow and empty?

“He fought hard for me to exclude you from this team.”

She couldn’t help but feel hurt by that, which only made her angrier. “So he wants me around about as much as I want him?”

“That’s ungenerous. He wants you safe, Skye, and on this team, you won’t always be.”

“Isn’t there some S.H.I.E.L.D. regulation against soulmates on a team together?” she tried. She was clutching at straws, she had to admit.

Coulson smirked. “Usually, yes. But I have a seemingly unending stack of favours with the director that I can pull out as needed. It’s how I have Fitzsimmons here. I wouldn’t have a pair on the team if I didn’t think it would end well; but Fitzsimmons are twice as brilliant when they work together. I predict you and Ward will develop something similar, if not better.”

 _I don’t._ “Where are we going?” she queried, anxious to move the subject along.

“Peru; to an 0-8-4.” Coulson caught her questioning look and clarified, “an object of unknown origin. These can be pretty interesting. The last one we encountered was Thor’s hammer.”

“That’s majorly cool. What this time—Odin’s nails? Freya’s spanner?”

Coulson favoured her with a chuckle. “We won’t know until we get there, Skye. I need to speak to May,” he apologised, standing to leave.

A nagging question occurred to Skye. “Wait! Coulson—How did you get all those favours?”

“I died.”

**

 

“I can’t believe we’re in Peru!” Skye grinned broadly, sweeping her bangs from her eyes and stepping out of the plane. Fitzsimmons were hurrying off into the jungle, debating different types of monkey, and Ward had doubled back to check tyre tracks, leaving Skye with Coulson and May.

She took a minute to simply gaze around the clearing, taking in the fact that she was in an actual rainforest. Bucket list moment, right there.

It was hotter than she would have expected with all the lush trees and deep shade, a thick, humid kind of heat that stuck in her throat. She felt sweat beading along her brow and sliding down the back of her neck and wrinkled her nose at the sensation. There was a hot, heady smell in the air—rotting vegetation, she realised after a second, rising from the mulch-y rainforest floor.

“Hey, Agent Coulson,” she called, catching sight of the various locals milling around the camp. “If the 0-8-4’s dangerous, the people living here could be in danger. I could post something, warn them.”

“Right,” he acknowledged. “Remember when that anti-matter meteor exploded right off the coast of Miami, nearly swallowed up the city?”

She blinked. “No?”

“Because we covered it up. If this gets out, I might need you to create a diversion, throw people off the scent, but that’s it.”

She shook her head. “So _everything_ I’m against, then?”

He shrugged and gave her a nod, turning back to May without another word.

Ward jogged back to the group and reported the tracks as normal. He pointedly avoided looking at Skye. He’d argued fiercely for her to stay on the plane where she would be out of the way, but Coulson had taken her side, pointing out in that mild way of his that she would only learn by being in the field.

Coulson began to pick his way over the knotted roots and fallen branches towards the site of the Incan temple that hid the 0-8-4, May at his side. The two senior agents talked in hushed voices, heads tilted together.

Skye slowed her step to fall in beside Ward, who had taken up a guarding position at the back of the group. “Hey,” she started, easy and non-confrontational.

He nodded brusquely back at her. “Skye.”

 _Real talker, this one._ “How are you even surviving in that jacket? It’s boiling.”

He shrugged, eyes scanning the trees. He was never still, Skye had noticed—even when he was sat down, unmoving, his gaze was ceaseless, constantly looking for danger. “I’ve been in hotter.”

“Where’s the hottest place you’ve ever been?” Skye asked him cautiously. _Are we having a conversation?_

He frowned, considering. “Ghadames, Libya. It’s in the middle of the desert; I was there for two days.”

“What were you doing?” Skye pressed.

Ward ducked to avoid a low-hanging vine. “That’s classified.”

She’d come across military firewalls more open than him. “What’s the coldest place, then?”

In the corner of her eye, she saw him smile slightly. “Ust-Nera, in Siberia. I was there for nearly two weeks in early March. The entire two weeks, it was never above -30.”

Even sweating in the middle of a rainforest, Skye shivered in sympathy. “I’m guessing that’s classified too?”

“Quiet,” he hissed.

Skye recoiled, affronted. “Well, I’m sorry for _asking_ , Agent—”

“I said _quiet.”_ His voice was almost silent but powerful enough to cut straight through her comeback.

He was listening, Skye realised—eyes narrowed, head cocked, one hand on the gun she knew was holstered at his waist. His head suddenly snapped up, eyes fixed on the trees behind her. He darted forwards, hand outstretched, and yanked a man out of the bushes directly behind Skye. She shrieked in surprise and leaped away, heart thudding against her sternum. She instinctively moved to cover Ward in case anyone else with a gun was waiting to jump out at them while he quickly dispatched the attacker with a swift blow to the temple and pulled the dazed man against him in a tight head lock, gun to his temple.

Two more guys had sprung May and received quick beat downs for their trouble; Coulson had disappeared inside the temple some time ago. Ward and May backed up the steps, guns raised and steady in their hands, but there seemed to be the majority of the Peruvian army staring right back down the barrels of even bigger guns. 

“Grant?” she murmured, backing towards the temple door nervously.

A muscle jumped in his jaw. “Coulson,” he said into his inner-ear comm, “we have a situation out here.”

Skye hadn’t merited her own comm, so she missed the commanding officer’s reply, but a moment later he emerged from the ruin and began speaking in fluent, if coarse, Spanish. Skye’s own single semester of Spanish taken several years before she’d dropped out of her junior year was nowhere near competent enough to follow, but she didn’t need a translation to read the recognition between Coulson and the leader of the gun-toting Peruvians.

With a nod from Coulson, Ward released his captive, and moved infinitesimally close to her, his shoulder blocking the line of fire from a cluster of soldiers slower than the rest to lower their guns.

“Agent Melinda May, Agent Grant Ward, Skye, this is _Commandante_ Camilla Reyes. We used to work together back in the day.” Coulson introduced them. “Skye, Ward, let Fitzsimmons know everything’s okay.”

Skye followed Ward through the low opening. He had to stop through the corridor, tucking his wide shoulders down. “We have company,” he announced when they reached the small cavern in the centre of the temple.

“What?” Fitz, exactly in time with Simmons’ “Who?”

“Military police, probably heard about the 0-8-4 and came to protect it,” Ward summarised quickly.

“Who from?” Simmons wondered, adjusting settings and reading on her tablet. Skye glanced at the tri-panel tablets the two scientists held, presumably controlling the small drones scanning everything they could possibly measure on the 0-8-4.

“Rebels,” Skye answered the scientist, feeling slightly smug at being able to answer a question from a woman currently operating complex robots. “There are lots of them here, protesting against the government’s mining policies. It’s pretty kickass.”

Ward turned to her and stared, his eyes drilling holes through her. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “It’s kickass, all the violence.”

 _And we’d been doing so well._ “That’s not what I’m saying,” she protested.

“No. It’s what you’re typing. In a van. Alone. Where it’s safe.” He turned to Fitzsimmons. “How much longer?”

“What’s the hurry?” Simmons demanded, typing in a rapid command.

Fitz looked up warily. “Are we in danger?”

“Not if everyone does their job,” he reasoned. He turned to Skye, eyes full of contempt, and asked her, “what is yours, exactly?”

She felt herself flush with bright, hot anger. “That is _so far_ from fair, Ward.”

“Is it? So far, you’ve only got in the way of the rest of us.” He retorted.

“It’s not my damn fault if you can’t concentrate, Agent I’ve-been-on-more-missions-than-you’ve-had-cups-of-coffee,” She seethed. “Maybe if you—”

She was cut of the rapid staccato of gunfire. The temple vibrated with the terrific noise, showering dust from the ancient stones upon them. “It sounds like they’re engaging with rebels,” Ward shouted over the gunfire. His voice was calm, collected, authoritative. It was like a different person had stepped into his skin, casting out the highly strung man she’d just been arguing with. “Let’s go,” he urged them, edging towards the door with his gun raised.

When they didn’t immediately follow, he looked back. “They’re coming for it, let’s move!”

Fitzsimmons urged their little robots back to them and powered them down, sliding them away into their case. Skye made to slide one into a vacant slot only to have Fitz snatch it from her hands. “It doesn’t go there,” he insisted.

“It doesn’t _matter_ ,” she told him, relinquishing the drone nevertheless.

“It does to me,” he snapped.

Jemma shot her an impatient glance. “Please, just let us do it.”

Skye shrank away from them, clenching her hands inside her pockets. She’d rarely felt so useless in her life.

“We need a containment case for the 0-8-4,” Simmons told Ward.

He shook his head. “There’s no time.”

“But it has a fluctuating power core,” Fitz told him brusquely. From the look on Ward’s face, he had no more idea of what that meant than Skye did, and Fitz’s next statement was equally lost.

Ward holstered his gun and strode over to the softly glowing object. “Sorry,” he said. “Science class is over.” He grasped the 0-8-4 in both hands and eased it from the wall, blithely ignoring Fitz’s increasingly hysterical protests.

“Stay close,” he ordered Fitzsimmons and Skye, having dumped the 0-8-4 on Fitz. Skye hurried after him into the glare and heat of the Peruvian day.

He was firing instantly, and with deadly accuracy. Skye watched as three men, previously hidden in the lush undergrowth, dropped to the ground, Ward’s bullets in their throats. A bullet whizzed past her shoulder and glanced off the side of the temple. She jumped away from the noise of it, into his peripheral vision. “What are you doing?” he demanded, a razor-sharp edge to his voice. “Get back, stay covered!”

She understood his panic perfectly; as much as she disliked him, the thought of one of the bullets finding him made her heart leap into her throat. She thumbed her timer to reassure herself; she could feel his pulse beating there. It wasn’t even elevated, in stark contrast to her own racing heart. 

With his free hand, Ward reached into his jacket and pulled out what looked like a short, silver stake. “He has a sonic staff,” Skye heard Simmons murmur approvingly.

“What’s that?”

“Watch,” Simmons nodded towards him. He jerked it forwards and it lengthened until it was about the length of his arm.

Fitz added, a little smugly, “We invented it whilst we were still at the academy.”

Ward leapt forwards down the stairs, turning a somersault in the air to land on his feet, and plunged the staff into the ground. The head of the staff broke away, shot up unto the ground, and emitted a pulse of brilliant blue light that knocked every rebel in the surrounding area down.

Discarding the used staff, he gestured them forwards from the temple mouth. Skye caught the movement of a rebel fighter raising his gun; he fired just as one of the S.H.I.E.L.D. SUVs pulled up in front of them, blocking the shot. “Get in,” Ward yelled, yanking to door open and holding it for Fitzsimmons. As soon as Skye had ducked under his arm and was safe in the car, he dived into the passenger seat.

May, in the driver’s seat, floored the gas. The wheels spun in the sand for a heartbeat before the SUV lurched forwards over the uneven ground.

They tore through the campsite, the car shuddering up and down so much Skye genuinely feared for the integrity of her spinal cord. Beside her, Fitzsimmons seemed to have more pressing worries about the 0-8-4.

The pair were trying to grasp Ward’s attention, using increasingly indecipherable scientific jargon the more upset they became. Ward interrupted Fitz mid-sentence with a sharp, “Get down, and _stay_ down!” just before the window next to Skye’s head buckled and shattered, spraying the back seat with safety glass.

May drove the SUV straight up the ramp of the cargo hold without slowing, throwing the handbrake on at the last second. She and Ward were out of the car immediately, running to secure the SUV and raise the cargo ramp.

“What are you doing?” Skye demanded, “Coulson’s still out there!”

Ward turned, eyes flashing. “Get off the ramp,” he ordered. “You’re in the line of fire.” His hands on her arms pulling her away were hot.

Coulson arrived with his _Commandante_ and her men, leaping onto the ramp just as it finished rising. “Cut it pretty fine there, sir,” Ward commented.

Coulson shrugged, clapping the specialist on the shoulder. “I didn’t want to leave anyone behind.”

The population of the cargo hold took a collective breath, Ward finally stowing his gun.

Skye slumped forwards, breathing heavily. “I gotta say it,” she gasped, “I miss my van.”

**

 

Of course the 0-8-4 locked on an airborne plane with them was worse than a nuclear bomb. Anything else would be just too easy.

Simmons was nervously explaining to Skye exactly how unstable ‘stable’ was when Ward and Fitz strode into the lab, talking angrily. “Are you _mental?_ ” Fitz demanded. “I did explain exactly what was going on, in the Queen’s bloody English!”

 _Not quite,_ Skye thought, unless the Queen had a degree in physics, or whatever the hell else Fitz had been on about.

“Yeah, well, I speak normal English, Fitz,” Ward replied. “Words like ‘duck’ and ‘run’ and ‘might _blow us to pieces._ ’”

Skye looked between the bickering men in growing realisation. _This isn’t a team._

By the time Coulson walked in, she couldn’t even tell what each of them was actually saying. “Do we have a problem in here?” Coulson asked, in that mild way of his that defied argument.

“No, sir.” Ward replied quietly. “Just—working on our communication. Not everyone—” his eyes flicked from Skye to Fitz to Simmons “—was ready for a firefight.”

“I think we did okay,” Coulson said. “We got out. No one was lost. We even saved a few of theirs.”

Skye raised her hand. “Uh, yeah,” she began when she had the focused attention of the team, “I had a small question. Because I’ve been feeling like the tag along, hayseed rookie, but now I’m starting to realise that I’ve been here as long as everyone else. Ward doesn’t seem to know which one’s Fitz and which one’s Simmons, and I think I’ve seen more gunfire than either of them. I’m no rocket scientist, but is this your first mission together?”

Simmons looked reproachfully at her. “Of course not! It’s our second.”

Skye had to choke back an incredulous, frightened laugh. “I was your first. That’s sweet.”

Ward glared at her. “And you’re amused.”

“I am terrified! I am in _way_ over my head here. It’s pretty obvious no one on this team actually likes each other except for Fitzsimmons, and you’re meant to be my damn soulmate!”

“This isn’t about the two of us. I’m a specialist, and today I could have eliminated the threat if I was working alone—”

Simmons and Fitz interrupted, outraged. “Alone? Who designed that sonic staff that saved your arse out there?”

“Which I wouldn’t have needed to use if I wasn’t trying to protect two people who failed their field test and a third who doesn’t even know what a field test is!”

Skye sidled over to Coulson. “See them all proving that point I just made?”

“You’re not wrong,” he said harshly. “But Ward, you can speak six languages. Simmons, you have two PhDs in fields I can’t even pronounce, and Fitz, you _are_ a rocket scientist. So work it out.”

He turned to leave, pausing at the door. “Ward, Skye, a word,” he called.

The followed him in silence out into the cargo bay.

“Sir?” Ward began.

Coulson gave them each a long, calculating look. “It’s a myth that soulmates always get a long right away. That just wouldn’t be realistic. But the two of you are actively baiting each other. I have called in a stack of favours ten years long to have the pair of you _and_ Fitzsimmons on my team. Fury thinks it stupid of me to put soulmates on a team together. He thinks they’re incapable of working together. And maybe not the way he thought, but right now, you’re proving him right.”

Skye chewed a sliver of dry skin from her lower lip. It wasn’t like anything he was saying was _wrong._ “Sir, we—”

“Shut up. I know the two of you need each other, I know that you could fall deeply in love with each other, but right now you’re a pain in my ass. Talk it out by the end of the day, or I will reassign you both to desk jobs at opposite ends of the world.”

**

 

Skye sat across from Ward in the living are, her legs folded beneath her. So far, ‘talking it out’ with him was a pretty silent process.

“Hey,” she began, unable to handle the silence any longer. “What I said earlier—about the violence, or whatever, it don’t want you to think I’m oblivious. I didn’t mean to say it was good. I was talking about the tweets.”

He looked at her hard.

“The tweets. Are you trying to make this better, or worse?”

“The Peruvians have organised for the first time in _decades._ Thousands of people who’ve never even met organising against an oppressive government, it’s amazing. That—that’s what I believe in. And I kind of don’t want to say this, because I don’t want to see your angry face, but—that’s what the Rising Tide was all about. One person rarely has the whole solution. But a hundred people, who each have one percent of the solution? They’ll get it done. I think that’s beautiful. Pieces solving a puzzle.” She said, smiling softly.

He rubbed a hands through his hair in wonder. “We see the world differently, you and I.”

She nodded. “I think that’s what Coulson was hoping for.”

The conversation lapsed away into silence again, more comfortable this time. When Skye didn’t speak for five minutes, it was Ward who broke the quiet. “I was unfair, earlier. In the temple. I’m sorry.”

“More like an absolute toolbag,” she retorted automatically, recalling the sting of his harsh words.

He seemed to close off before her, his eyes darkening. Skye backtracked hurriedly. “Wait—I didn’t mean that. Well, I kinda did, because it’s _kinda true_ , but I didn’t mean to _say_ it. I just—I sometimes talk without thinking it through. It’s a flaw.”

He held her gaze for a second, eyes sharp, and Skye wondered what had made him this way, so distrusting of affection, of apology. He nodded after a moment and leaned forwards, placated. His movement pulled his white t-shirt taught and revealed a small but spreading stain just above his waistband.

“Oh my God!” Skye exclaimed, jumping up and hurrying to his side.

He looked up, alarmed. “What?”

She knelt in front of the sofa he was seated at stared up at him, incredulous. “Did you get _shot?_ ” she demanded.

He waved a hand dismissively. “Skin deep, nothing to worry about.”

“You got shot!”

“I said don’t worry about it,” he insisted, forcing a smile and grabbing her hand when she reached for the hem of his shirt.

Skye swallowed thickly. “Did this happen protecting us? Protecting _me?_ ”

His thumb rubbed a soothing circle across the back of her hand. She could feel the callouses in his grip; they mirrored the grip of a gun. “I’m _fine_ ,” he said.

She took a deep breath and sat back on her heels. “Well, now I understand why you were so pissed.”

He leaned back, releasing her hand. “I wasn’t pissed. Just—I was trained to be the whole solution. Get in, get the job done, eliminate any variables. And today, with the team, with _you_ there, they just keep mounting up.”

**

 

Ward’s senses were on hyper alert. He’d begun making calculations the second he’d noticed the Peruvian’s playing cards over full drinks. He leant towards Skye, reaching for the bottle as he did so.

“Easy there, hotshot, you’ve not even finished your drink,” she remarked.

He met her gaze firmly, trying to convey all of his meaning with a single look; after all, Fitzsimmons seemed capable of telepathic connection with just a glance. “I’m not the only one,” he murmured.

Realisation dawned on her face and she nodded slowly. He saw the fear in her eyes and longed to reassure her.

He tapped three fingers against his glass. “Stay behind me. I don’t care what you have to do, don’t let one of them come between us.”

She nodded wordlessly. He leapt from his seat and shoved her behind him, one hand grasping the glass scotch bottle.

One of the Peruvians ran to meet him; Ward smashed the bottle on the table and ground the jagged glass edges into the man’s hand with savage force. Throughout his time at the S.H.I.E.L.D. ops academy, the most frequent mistake his classmates made was hesitating at a crucial moment, unwilling, when it came down to it, to take the killing blow, to really hurt their opponent. It was not a problem he had ever had. 

The smashed his elbow into the back of the downed man’s neck. It would stun him for a few seconds, enough time for Ward to dispatch the other man. They were both big men with military training, but neither had his strength or discipline. A hook to the jaw brought the second man to his knees. Ward kicked him beneath the chin, sending him sprawling backwards.

More resilient than his companion, he rolled with the kick and landed on a crouch, already standing again in time for Ward to slam into him, taking them both down. Ward pinned the man with a knee on each of his arms and then broke his nose with a quick jab.

He heard approaching footsteps hurry towards him and glanced up, fist raised ready for a second strike. Coulson came to a halt a few feet from Ward, dismay on his face. Ward followed his eyes to the monitors displaying the feed from the lab; two of Reyes’ men had Fitzsimmons, one of them holding a scalpel up to Fitz’s throat.

Ward stilled, let his hand fall. He heard Skye give an angry, muffled curse and whipped around, ready to fight once more. The soldier he’d glassed had Skye in a bruising grip, smiling vindictively at Ward. “ _Hijo do puta,”_ Ward spat, making to stride forwards.

“Stand down, Agent Ward,” Coulson snapped.

Ward hesitated, his mind flicking through the ways he could get Skye away from to Peruvian man. He came up with seven options in the time it took him to come to a halt. Three ended with the man dead. All ended with only minimum damage to himself, Skye or Coulson. But—Fitz.

He swore again, in several languages, and nodded.

**

 

Ward had been in worse situations by a long way. He’d completed training drills more complex than this; in fact, this was pretty friendly by the standards of the academy. Fitzsimmons and Skye were, of course, panicking.

“This is my fault,” Fitz lamented. “I should have learned Kung Fu.” If there was one thing that would have made a plane hijacking worse, Ward mused, it would have been the skinny, overeager scientist hyped-up on bravado trying to use Kung Fu.

Simmons sighed comfortingly. “No, Fitz, I shouldn’t have pushed you into the filed before you were ready.” Now—there was an idea Ward could get behind.

“It was my job to protect you all,” he began heavily.

Skye cut him off, tugging on her cuffs. “You couldn’t have protected everyone on the plane, Grant, we were on three different levels. Maybe if May was awake.”

Fitzsimmons exchanged a puzzled look. “Nah,” Fitz said. “She transferred from administration.”

Skye frowned. “I saw her _destroy_ a guy.”

Fitzsimmons turned to look at him, eager curiosity in their eyes. “You’ve heard of the Cavalry?” Ward smirked.

Fitzsimmons nodded, puzzled. “Of course we have—”

“—everyone at the academy—”

He watched as the realisation struck them both at exactly the same time. “ _She’s the Cavalry?”_

“I told you never to call me that,” May muttered, stirring beside Skye.

Unperturbed, Simmons beamed at the senior agent. “Oh, we’re sure to get out of here now! How do we get out of here?”

May rolled her eyes, pulling herself up. “We can’t use the doors; they’re tired to the pressurisation lines. You two geniuses have nothing?”

Fitzsimmons looked jointly wounded. “It’s hard to think of anything under all of this pressure,” Fitz complained.

“Hey, don’t freeze up, take a breath,” Ward reassured the younger man. He glanced over at Skye and caught her eye, gave her a small smile. “You don’t have to come up with the whole solution. Just a part of it. Right?”

“Yeah,” she smiled softly back, her gaze wandering to the sealed door. “Pieces solving a puzzle.”

**

 

Skye was beginning to agree with Simmons that her idea might have been ‘the worst one yet’. Driving an SUV into the lab had been a pretty wacky way to kick off the plan, but now the fun was really getting started.

Ward had created three harnesses out of the coils of rope they’d found in the store room, once each for Skye, Fitz and Simmons, and was currently clipping them all together. He paused in front of her, his hand wrapped around the karabiner at her navel.

“Be careful,” he said finally. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

Skye narrowed her eyes. “Stupid? Why don’t _you—”_

“Ward, Skye, now is _not_ the time,” May snapped.

They held each other’s gazes for another, charged second, before Ward stepped back.

Fitz activated his DWARF remotely and a second later they heard the shrieking sound of metal rending, followed by the roar of air rushing past the plane. The locked door opened, advertised by a green light on the side panel, and they hurried through.

Having never been in a rapidly depressurising plane before, she hadn’t quite anticipated the sheer suction force it would generate. Only the rope tying her to Fitzsimmons was keeping her from being flung out of the plane after the Peruvian soldiers.

Skye followed Simmons over to where the 0-8-4 was embedded in the opposite wall of plane and helped the scientist pry it from the bulkhead. It came free with little effort, and Fitz was reeling them back in when a thin sheet slapped over Skye’s face. She pried it free and recognised it as one of the safety pamphlets Ward had thrust into her hands earlier.

Inspiration struck her, and she fiddled with the karabiner grounding her to Fitzsimmons, untangling herself. She pulled free and began to crawl in the opposite direction, staying low to avoid flying objects. She felt the immense pull of the open air tugging at her, making her hair stream towards the hole in the bulkhead. The fierce wind inside the cabin was bitterly cold and raised the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck; the wind pulled tears from her narrowed eyes. She lunged forwards and grabbed onto one of the life rafts.

She fumbled desperately for the release, hands numb in the freezing air. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a soldier fly into Ward, saw him holding on literally by a thread.

She released the life raft.

Ward fell.

 _It’s not going to be big enough,_ she thought desperately, _or it’s going to inflate too late, or it’s going to be too weak and he’s going to go straight through it._

In that split second, she came to the horrible, nauseating realisation that even though he was a rude, taciturn dick who worked for a corrupt, lying organisation, he was her _soulmate_ and she _could not_ live without him, and—

He hit the life raft, bounced off and slumped to the floor.

Coulson staggered forwards and knocked out the last soldier with a swift punch; Skye was already running past him.

Ward had only just regained his footing when she slammed into him, wrapping her arms tight around his ribs. He caught her reflexively and then paused, stunned as she pressed her face into his chest breathed in deeply. After a second, his arms came around her securely, pulling her still closer.

“I thought you were going to die,” she explained, voice muffled.

She felt his cheek come to rest against her hair, felt the vibration of his words in his chest. “I would have, without you. Thanks for saving my life.”

She bit her lip, unsure whether she wanted to laugh or cry. “I read the safety manual,” she told him.

He laughed then, and so did she.

**

 

Skye walked down the partly-lowered cargo ramp and sat down beside Ward. Fitz passed her a beer silently, and she opened it on the edge of the cargo ramp, taking a long, slow sip.

“So, I want to be a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent,” she announced. She was sat just close enough to Ward that she could feel his arm moving when he breathed.

He nodded, unsurprised. _Smug bastard,_ she thought, a little fondly. “What kind?”

“Not like you,” she said quickly, then realised what that sounded like. “I mean—I don’t want to go all black-ops and be a super-spy or assassin or anything. And I don’t know about learning a hundred languages. And—I don’t want to lose my timer. But like Coulson, I think I could do that.”

Ward nodded again, a slow smile on his face. “A field agent, then. We can work that.”

“We?”

“You’ll need an S.O,” he told her.

She frowned. “Are you allowed, being my soulmate?”

“No,” he smirked. “But Coulson already asked me, and he tends to get his way.” Suddenly serious, he turned to her. “It won’t be easy, and you’ll hate me for quite a bit of it. You’ll have to obey my orders. But everyone else in the world seems to think we’ll make a good team, what do you say we test that theory?”

She tipped her beer to clink against his. “Here’s to that, S.O.”

**

 

“One more thing, Coulson,” Fury called, stopping at the door.

Coulson sighed in anticipation of what he knew was coming. It had been bad enough that he had to scrap the fish tank. “Director?”

“I’m not happy with you bringing on another soulmate pair. It’s regulation for a _reason_ ¸ Phil, at least Fitzsimmons aren’t going to be in fire fights together.”

“Sir, you let me have Fitzsimmons because they work well together. What if _that_ ’ _s_ the reason people have soulmates? They’re the person you work best with, your ultimate partner?” Coulson replied.

Fury looked unimpressed. “Working together is one thing, having him _train_ her? You’re out your damn mind.”

“I know my agents, sir. I believe in them.”

“You’d better prove me wrong, Phil. That endless pile of favours you earned is getting a little thin.”

 

 

 


	4. I can't help (falling in love with you)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M SO SORRY  
> It's been ages since I updated and I am a monster but here you are!! Thank you so much for your patience and please enjoy.

Skye stood in the shower, relishing the feeling of the hot water on her aching muscles. She'd washed quickly so that she could enjoy the remainder of her time simply relaxing in the steam. The water cut out far too quickly for her liking—but then, they were on a plane with limited water tanks.

Her first training session had been enlightening, to say the least. The 5am start had been bad enough even before Ward blankly told her that arriving half an hour late again wouldn't fly. Then she'd discovered, through a lengthy process of sweat, pain and humiliation that her fitness was below average and needed 'vast improvement'. Twenty sit-ups in one minute was not, it turned out, acceptable.

She found Ward in the living area, a book propped open on his knee. He'd changed into a grey thermal shirt with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows and a pair of dark wash jeans. "Hey," she called, sitting down on the arm of the sofa beside him. His hair was slightly damp from his own shower and he smelled of a sharp, clean shower gel she couldn't put a name to; somewhere between mint and fresh air.

"Your hair's dripping on my book," he said.

She rolled her eyes and leaned away from him. "Better be a good book."

"It is," he agreed, turning the page. " _Eagle of the Twelfth_."

Skye leaned over his shoulder again, bracing one hand on the arm of the sofa and the other on his bicep. She felt the muscle tense beneath her fingertips. " _The sun edged up until it caught the first heights of our standards,"_ she read aloud. "Cool. Another from your S.O.?"

"Yes," he replied absently.

Skye wasn't sure whether he was distracted by the book or her proximity. She slid down into the small space between his thigh and the arm of the sofa, letting her head come to a rest on top of her hand were it rested on his arm. His breath hitched, and she grinned, delighted. Her proximity, then. "Are you going to give me a reading list?"

He stood suddenly, tossing the book onto the coffee table. He smoothed his palms down the front of his jeans and swallowed. "I'm getting breakfast; do you want any?"

"Sure," she smiled, giving up on teasing him.  _For now._

Unbelievably, Ward had scheduled another training session for that afternoon. He was, once again, already beating the hell out of the punching bag when she arrived in a tank top and sweats. He glanced at the clock in the labs, and gave her a disapproving look. "You're late," he greeted her, walking over to a supply closet and pulling out two strips of long white material.

"I'm tired," she huffed. "From this morning's workout."

"This is important," he insisted testily. "Next time, you'll do fifteen push-ups for every minute you're late."

She shot him a hot glare. "As long as they're not pull-ups, soulmate-of-mine. I don't  _ever_ want to do another pull-up again."

"Find yourself hanging off the edge of a building, twenty stories up?" he began, measuring the white bandages between his hands, "you're going to want to do at least one. Hands," he added, holding out one of the bandages.

Skye gave him her left hand. Her hands were small and slender, the nails cut short and straight. In comparison, his hands were broad and long-fingered, with blunt fingertips and calluses on his palm. She breathed in sharply when he took her hand in his, her eyes flicking from his eyes to his lips and then away. A flush spread across her cheeks and she cleared her throat. "What's with the bandages?"

"They're hand wraps," he murmured. "They'll protect your hands when we start working on the bag."

He quickly finished up and wrapped her other hand. He stepped back, slapping the bag. "We're going to start with basic boxing moves, relative strength training. Stand like this," he instructed, moving into a boxing stance. "Jab-cross, on the bag. Ten minutes."

Skye began to mimic him. Her arms still ached from the morning's gruelling work-out, and she didn't hit the bag hard enough to make it move in inch. "This is a lot less exciting than I thought it would be," she complained. "Being a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent."

Ward raised an eyebrow unsympathetically. "The basics are important. Raise your guard, your hands are too low."

"Why am I even doing this?" she whined, thumping the bag with both hands. "I'm sure Fitzsimmons never had to do this muscle stuff."

Ward leaned against the bag and looked over her shoulder to where Fitzsimmons were working in the lab. "You said you wanted to be a field agent, like Coulson? If you'd like to switch disciplines—hey, Simmons!" He called. "What did your S.O. give you for morning drills?"

The biochemist grinned. "Atomistic attribute drills," she replied.

"We'd list the mechanical, electrical, thermal—" Fitz began.

Skye cut in, "Okay, they made your point."

Ward smirked. "Or if you'd prefer, you could be a specialist. My S.O. used to start me off with a ten mile run, then two hours of strength training, followed by three hours of combat and then two of weapons training. And then in the evening—"

"Oh my god, you can stop," Skye muttered.

"You'll have a defining moment when you commit to this, or bail." He told her. "It's my job to make sure you don't die before then."

"What was your moment?" She asked him, meeting his eyes. It had been an innocent question, but suddenly, she really wanted to know.

"Ten minutes," he told her grimly.

"Come on, I wanna know!" She pressed. Her guard had dropped; he pulled her hands up. "So much for being soulmates. If that's not the definition of someone you can spill to, I don't know what is." He shook his head, eyes dark. Skye frowned, realising he wasn't going to expand on the subject no matter how much she pressed. When he eventually nodded for her to stop, she dropped her hands with a relieved sigh and sat down, unwrapping her hands.

"When are you going to teach me Kung Fu?" she demanded.

"I'm not."

"Huh?" she frowned.

Ward cleared his throat, taking a sip of his own water. "S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't use Kung Fu. Specialists are trained in MMA, Russian Sambo, Krav Maga, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and MCMAP."

She blinked. "Um."

"I'll teach you a variety of disciplines, mix them up to find a style that works best for you. You're small and not naturally strong, so we'll use your opponent's size and strength against them." He explained.

A chime echoed through the cargo hold, followed by May's voice over the comms announcing a change in course and a mission briefing in three.

"Looks like we're on the move!" Fitz called from the lab, discarding his lab coat and following Simmons up the stairs. Skye hurried after them, Ward a step behind.

Coulson was stood in the lounge area, a tablet in his hands. "A priority red asset was taken in Colorado," he announced, scrolling through files on the tablet.

"Priority red?" Simmons clarified excitedly. Skye wasn't fully up on S.H.I.E.L.D. lingo yet, but she figured that 'priority red' was pretty universal.

Coulson nodded to Simmons. "The asset was Dr Frank Hall."

Fitzsimmons expressed joint distress, turning to each other and exchanging one of their soul-deep, mind read-y looks. Fitz took Simmons' hands in his and they turned back to Coulson. "We're going to rescue him, aren't we?" Simmons implored.

"He's one of ours," Coulson affirmed. "We're going to try. The attackers were invisible," he read aloud, brows rising in surprise.

And that, right there, was a good enough reason for joining S.H.I.E.L.D. "Invisible?" Skye echoed. "That is  _so_ cool." Ward cast her a disparaging look and she looked away, chastened. "And—terrible." She amended.

Cool still stood, as far as she was concerned.

They walked spread out across the road, about a foot between each of them, in the dark. Skye was trying really hard not to skip because  _hello_ it was just  _so_   _Avengers_ , or  _Men in Black_  that she could have squealed.

Ward turned to her and gave her a long, searching look. "You look pretty upbeat."

"I can't help it!" She protested. "This is so  _exciting_."

"I wasn't getting at you, Skye. I—I like how excited you get. It's refreshing." He muttered. The words looked to have cost him physical pain, but it was an honest admission, and one that Skye was thankful for.

She nudged her elbow against his waist and smiled up at him. "Aww. Thanks, S.O."

"Not the time, you two, or the place," Coulson called from Ward's other side. "We have a mission to do."

And what a mission it was going to be, because there, in front of them, not ten metres away, was a S.H.I.E.L.D. jeep—in the top of a quietly groaning tree. Skye's lips parted in a silent gasp. She glanced away from the jeep and followed Coulson's gaze to a semi, sprawled haphazardly across the road. Coulson departed to interview the driver of the semi, a heavyset trucker with a bloodied nose.

After dithering for a second, unsure what she was meant to be doing, Skye followed Fitz to where Simmons stood, wearing a pair of glowing green goggles and poking the air with what looked like a conductor's baton. The scientists bickered over the goggles, using more and more jargon as they become more irate, until Simmons tossed a handful of gravel in the air. The team watched, dumfounded, as the gravel swirled in a suspended vortex.

Skye's fingers itched towards her phone in her pocket. Her instincts screamed for her to record this new phenomenon and get it out there for the world to see—but a new, quieter impulse whispered that if  _Fitzsimmons_ didn't understand this, what hope did an ignorant world have? Her hand stilled, her fingertips resting on her denim-clad phone.

The vortex was beautiful, she thought, even if it was spitting gravel at them at an alarming pace. A piece of gravel stung her in the cheek and she stepped back sharply, suddenly invested in Fitz' attempts to shut down whatever was happening. A frantic scramble later, and the gravel fell to the floor, normal once more.

"What's this?" Simmons asked, picking a small circular chamber from the ground.

Coulson took it from her and considered it at eye height; the tiny thing could not have been the size of his eyeball. Nonetheless, the gravitas in his voice was impossible to ignore when he said simply, "Something big."

The Colorado sun was hot on Ward's neck, but a pleasantly cool breeze eased the discomfort until it was almost unnoticeable. Concealed in the bushes a few feet from Lola's conspicuous red finish, he listened out for the tell-tale sounds of an approaching horse. The three-time beat of a steady canter announce their target's approach long before he crested the hill and rode into the ravine, slowing his horse to stop before Coulson.

Ward noted the shotgun over the back of the saddle and the long hunting knife at the man's belt; his own hand went to the sidearm at his waist. When Coulson began to accuse the guy of wrongdoing, he paced silently from his hiding spot. The horse twitched an ear, far more observant than its master. Ward smiled; he'd always admired animals.

The mark went for his shotgun, and Ward reached up to grab the barrel, twisting sharply to unseat the man and aim the man's own gun at his sprawled form. "This is starting to feel like the Old West," he said genially, cocking the gun and removing the safety. Garrett had hammered that into him early on— _what's the point in aiming a gun at someone if he doesn't think you're gonna shoot him, son? Safety off, or you might as well be holding a water pistol._

The man raised his hands, suddenly far less cocksure. "They gave me money for my equipment," he said quickly. "I never saw a face, I never heard a name."

"How did you receive this money?" Coulson asked mildly. "Did they write you a check?"

The man grimaced and pointed a grubby finger at his saddle bags. Ward hefted one and upended it, the surprising weight making sense when gold bars spilled across the ground like the teeth of the rich. "They paid you in  _gold?_ " Coulson asked, disbelieving, taking one misshapen bar and examining it in the sunlight.

Ward shrugged, shouldering the shotgun. "Now it really feels like the Old West."

When Fitzsimmons' scanners determined that their cowboy's gold payment had come from the pocket of Ian Quinn, Ward felt an uncomfortable and undeniable sinking feeling. He'd met the man before, through S.H.I.E.L.D. as well as through Garrett, and he'd always found him unpleasantly slimy at best.  _A necessary annoyance,_ Garrett had once called him, and Ward had, at the time, been inclined to agree with only one adjective.

If Ian Quinn was holding Dr Hall prisoner, it could only mean bad news for all involved.

"The man's a prisoner," Coulson told the gathered team, "and it's our job to get him out."

"We've checked the specs," Ward protested, rounding the holotable. "There's no way into Quinn's compound without a large S.H.I.E.L.D. strike force—or a man inside. He's got neo-dymium laser fencing surrounding the property!"

"There'll never allow a strike force into Malta," Coulson replied, voicing the damning thought Ward had been contemplating. Quinn was many things, but he certainly wasn't an idiot. "Plus, this weekend, Quinn worldwide's got its annual share-holder's meeting; we'd risk global outrage."

Out of the corner of his eye, Ward noted the gleam on Skye's face at the phrase 'global outrage'. Bad enough that she had a history of airing S.H.I.E.L.D.S. dirtiest washing to the press, she seemed intent on enraging the bad guys in the same way. Ward passed a hand to his eyes in consternation for his wayward soulmate.

"But," Coulson was saying, "if we go in alone—"

"S.H.I.E.L.D. can disavow us," May finished. It still amazed Ward that Coulson's soulmate  _wasn't_ the taciturn specialist. Hard as it was to imagine the Cavalry looking at anyone with something approaching warmth, she and Coulson had a wavelength almost as parallel as Fitzsimmons'.  _And wouldn't that be something_ , he thought to himself.  _Three soulmate pairs on one team_.

"Without a man inside it's impossible, unless you're immune to pulse laser emissions." May said flatly.

Fitz broke in with a suggestion about a monkey—the most disturbing part of which, Ward thought, was the deadly serious tone to the man's voice.

"I could go in," Skye suggested quietly.

Ward froze. It took everything he had to scramble for something to say, and even then his voice was tight, frayed. "Put me in the hills outside of Valletta," he begged. "I'll spend a few weeks establishing a cover—"

"Frank doesn't have a few weeks," Coulson told him and, dammit, Ward could have killed the man, because Skye hadn't had a few  _days_ training, and he  _could not let—_

"Any Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. caught on Maltese soil could be shot to death, legally," Simmons reminded him.

"Not me," Skye said quickly. "I'm not an Agent."

"Skye," he snapped, his voice as cold as possible to freeze out the desperation he was fighting. "This is serious."

Coulson stepped forwards. "Wait. What are you saying?"

"Well, I'm not an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., so I can go in without breaking all these stupid rules and getting…" her eyes lingered on Ward. "…shot."

"This isn't something the Rising Tide can hack, Skye!" he put in, swearing to some higher power that if Fitz said  _one more thing_ about monkeys…

"You said you could go in with a man inside," Skye said levelly, a hint of defiance in her voice.

May looked at his soulmate, calculating tactics warring with disbelief in her face. "You want to be that man?"

"Fitzsimmons love the guy, and they could be torturing him. Or worse—" she shot a sly look at Ward. "—making him do strength training."

He paced forwards then, barely containing his strides. "You don't have the background, the training, the  _experience_ —"

"I know," she interrupted, holding her phone up like the Olympic torch. "But I do have an invitation…well;  _technically_  it's an e-vite."

Coulson owned at least a dozen identical suits, and he was examining every single one of them. If Ward had to watch him brush lint from one more charcoal lapel, he vowed that the suits would quickly find themselves on the wrong side of the cargo hold door, Coulson possibly still wearing one.

"I understand your concern," Coulson said, "but we don't have a lot of options."

That, Ward thought, was a blatant lie. The only way Coulson could possibly understand his  _concern_  was if his own soulmate was the one cavalierly volunteering for a highly dangerous task on less than a week's worth of training. The smooth, even pulse displayed on Coulson's timer below the frozen date of their meeting showed that his soulmate—whoever she may be—was in no such situation.

"I'm impressed," Ward admitted. The words tasted like grit in his mouth, and he choked on the admission. "She just wrangled an invite on her phone, using insider back channel voodoo, in minutes, but she has next to no training! You are taking a  _massive_ risk, Sir, and it's with my soulmates life."

"Are you just worried about her safety, or is it her loyalty as well?" Coulson asked,  _finally_ putting down his damn suits.

Ward followed him into his office cabin. "Both, if I'm honest. I want to trust her— _God_ , I want to trust her—but I can't, not quite yet. She wouldn't betray me," he said, hoping desperately that he was right even as he said it, "but I can't say the same for S.H.I.E.L.D. The Rising Tide, they're the reason she has this invite. She used whatever connections she could, broke how may protocols…" he hated to throw her under the proverbial bus, but if it kept her away from Quinn, he'd cheerfully strap her to her bunk.

"That's her job," Coulson insisted. "There's something that's bothering you, and it's not her safety, or her loyalty."

"She…" he hesitated, biting his lip on such harsh criticism of a girl who, whatever else she might be, was as brave as a lion against anything they'd thrown at her so far. "She's holding back. She says she wants to be an agent, but she's holding back, making jokes, showing up late all the time."

"Were you hard on her?" Coulson questioned him.

Ward shifted his weight. "I tried to be," he admitted. "I found it…more difficult than normal to be tough on her." He'd die before he'd admit that her brown eyes turned on him made every harsh word taste bitter on his tongue. "I tried being nice, but it didn't work. I don't know what approach to take."

"Try no approach," his superior officer suggested.

Ward frowned. "Sir?"

"She's your soulmate, Ward.  _Yours_. Not a heartless agent's, or a fake nice guy. Have you tried being just yourself with her? You're soulmates for a reason. Let her see who you are—maybe then you can help her be who she is."

He swallowed and nodded, turning on his heel.  _Between Christian, Garrett, Coulson, Skye…_ he thought,  _I'm not entirely sure who I am._

The expression on Ward's face was absolutely blank when he raised the gun and aimed it at her chest. They'd been working for the better part of an hour, and Skye had yet to get the move right.

"Again," Ward said with forced patience. " _Slowly._  What's first?"

She gave him a dark look and gripped his forearm, ducking under his arm and pressing back against his chest. She paused, then, taking a long second to enjoy the firm, solid heat of his chest against her back. As frustrating as the training was becoming, this stage, this moment of being pressed against him, her timer clearly visible from her grip on his wrist—this stage never failed to calm her nerves.

"And then?" he prompted. She felt the vibration of his words against her spine, and fought a shiver.

Her first impulse was to turn in his arms and reach up to pull his lips to hers, trace the strong line of his neck and jaw. She furiously pushed aside the impulse, saying instead, "And then? Things are moving too quickly, I'm a proper Southern girl, you'll make me  _untidy_."

His hand pulled hers roughly to cover his grip on the gun and he forced her through the next step. "Twist the thumb, pull on the barrel," he muttered tersely, stepping back from her.

She rubbed at her aching thumb joint, protesting his rough treatment. "Ow," she muttered sulkily.

"You're going to  _die_ , and leave us hanging out to dry, you know that?" he snapped, glaring fiercely at her. "You're going in with  _no_ self-defence skills—"

"I have a few tricks up my sleeves," she retorted, keeping her cool only because she could hear the raw desperation behind his anger.

"You need muscle memory. Fundamentals. The tools to turn yourself into—"

"A whole bag of tools?"

He lunged forwards then, his face bearing an expression so furious that, were it not for the soul-deep recognition between then, she would have flinched in fear. His fingers closed around her left wrist in a tight grip. He jerked her hand up to her face, shoving the timer so close to her eyes it was blurry. She blinked—not blurry, but the circle that expanded and contracted with his pulse was growing and shrinking so quickly that her eyes skipped when she tried to follow it. Watching his pulse trip and race before her eyes at the same time as she felt it where his fingers pressed into her wrist, a sudden guilt roared through her, and tears gathered in her eyes.

"How can you joke about this?" he demanded— _begged—_ his voice fractured and almost too quiet to hear. "I don't have a timer. I can't track you the same way you can track me. If you go in there, reckless and over confident and  _unprepared_ , if you get  _killed_ ¸ I won't get to watch your pulse stop, I won't see the timer go red. I won't get to carry that date on my wrist. I'll just feel you  _ripped from me_. I've fought to keep you on this bus, but everyone here—including you—seems determined to send you into danger. I can't go with you, and short of tying you down, I can't think of any way to stop you going. I am trying to keep you alive.  _Not_ for the mission. Not for Doctor fucking Frank Hill. Because  _I cannot bear it if you die._ "

She pulled her wrist free and stared into his eyes—dark brown, only a few shades away from actual black—and with a sharp, deep breath, she threw herself forwards, wrapping her arms around his neck. She let herself imagine that it was Grant doing this mission instead of her, only with none of his super-spy mojo. "I'm sorry," she whispered into the skin of his neck. "I'm so sorry, Grant. I have to do this. I have to—"

"Prove it to yourself," he murmured, his lips against her crown. "I know. I'm not asking you not to go. I'm asking you to take it  _seriously._  To listen to me, and prepare."

He pulled back slightly, considering her. He lifted a warm hand to cradle the side of her face and wipe a stray tear from her cheek bone. "How did you learn computer science without concentrating?" he asked, only his tone was gentle, now.

"CS comes naturally to me," she shrugged, taking his hand in hers and holding it between their chests, their other arms still entwined. "This doesn't come naturally to me like it does for you."

He snorted and raised an eyebrow. "You think this came naturally." There was an edge to his voice again, a cold, long term anger that wasn't directed at her but was no less fierce. His arms around her, though, were as warm as ever. "I had a brother that beat the crap out of me, me and my little brother," he said, his words overly careful. "For nothing. For eating a piece of his birthday cake. I had to  _learn_ to protect us." His hand came up once more to trace the side of her face; the gentleness of his touch belying the rage in his words. "The way I am  _trying_ to protect you."

"That was your moment," she said, coming to the realisation before he could admit it. He nodded silently. "I'm sorry," she said again. "I didn't mean to act as though—as though this doesn't mean anything to me. As though I don't understand." There was an odd lilt to her words, and then she was smiling, suddenly, and pulling back. He felt the loss of her in his arms for a second before he felt the other loss to his person—the fake gun shoved into his waistband that she now held aloft, her trophy.

"Getting the gun is one thing," he said, allowing her a surprised smile. "But pulling the trigger—that's another. Again.  _Slowly."_

Skye had never really had the chance to attend any kind of social function that didn't involve a few thousand miles of distance between each participant, or a court order.  _Mingling_ was a new experience for her—so new that she had almost no time to panic about the plan they'd hastily cobbled together before her departure. Between Fitzsimmons' talking in her tiny earpiece and the steady flow of conversation around her, she had no time to do anything but remember the basic  _plan, green, drop, pie_  they'd arranged.

It helped, of course, that she seemed to have a talent for mingling—and that, every so often, she adjusted her wrist  _just so_  and her bangle tipped to reveal the calming presence of the timer. Grant's pulse was steady, unbelievably calm even in the middle of a mission. The bangle was not to hide her timer—it certainly wouldn't hold up under anything more than a casual glance—but, according to Coulson and a quick google of 'high society etiquette', unless one was accompanied by their soulmate, or had yet to find them, it was bad manners to flaunt a matched timer.

After successfully charming the oil baron who'd built—and owned—the majority of Dubai, Skye scanned the party and saw a man with dark hair and a pale suit. "Eagle to bravo," she whispered into her ear piece, fighting a grin at the  _Spy Kids_  vibe. "I have eyes on top dog."

Through the open channel that connected her to the bus, and on to Coulson and Ward, Skye was sure she heard her soulmate stifle a laugh and mutter something laced with exasperation.

"What are you doing, Skye?" May demanded tersely.

Feeling appropriately chastened, she took a bite of hors d'oeuvres. "Sorry. I, uh, I see Quinn."

"Good! Approach him," May directed.

Skye took a steadying sip of champagne and stepped forwards, ignoring Grant's fortifying  _be careful, Skye,_ and slipped into Quinn's group of admirers, laughing politely.

She took a second to survey the reason she was at this party; Ian Quinn was not an unattractive man, she decided, and fit for his middle age, though she couldn't help but draw an unfavourable comparison between him and Grant's taller, more muscled figure.

"Ian Quinn," she smiled. "I'm your last minute party crasher. Skye," she extended a hand.

Quinn gave her an appraising look that paid particular attention to her breasts, before smiling widely. It was a polished, practiced smile that made her skin crawl with revulsion. "Oh," he smiled. "Wow. This is Skye, a member of the Rising Tide; they're a group of hackers. They've gotten some pretty big secrets out to the public."

Despite herself, Skye couldn't stop a pleased smile at Quinn's acknowledgement of her work. "I prefer hacktivist," she said simply. "I'm glad you've heard of our site."

"I read it," he said casually. "We think very much alike; more freedom of information, less government infringing on everyone's rights; I'm a fan."

"That explains the invite; this is a  _tough_ party to get into."

He looked at her mildly. "Not as tough as the encrypted back channel you used to request the invite."

"That's sort of where I live," she admitted.

He nodded, genuine surprise on his features. "You've got to show me how you did that," he told her. Not a request—an order. "I mean, if you sign on."

"Sign what now?" she queried. Through her comm, she could hear Grant and Coulson, their voices low and almost undetectable.

"I've been known to turn a few black hats into white hats, for very creative thinking," Quinn said carefully.

Skye didn't have to fake her surprise, this time; a  _job offer?_ From  _Ian Quinn?_  "Are you—offering me a job?"

"I didn't invite you here for your pretty face," he said, matter of fact. "I didn't know you  _had_ a pretty face. Yes, I'm offering you a job, before someone else snatches you up." He strode away, leaving his offer hanging in the air like a bad smell.

She fought against the urge to clench her teeth; everything about Quinn's body language, from the arrogant tilt of his head to the hands thrust in his pockets, screamed self-assuredness; she was pretty sure no one in the world thought quite as highly of Ian Quinn as he himself did. And yet—his encrypted back channel, though tough to crack, had several gaping holes in it a mile wide if you knew where to look. He wasn't nearly as good as he thought he was, and he certainly wasn't as good as he wanted her to think.  _Jackass,_ she surmised.

In her comm, May's voice sounded. "That seemed to go well," the Specialist commented.

"Yeah," Skye said. "It did." In spite of everything—she  _did_ believe in freedom of information, the way that Quinn did and S.H.I.E.L.D. decidedly didn't. The very first lesson Grant had taught her came back to her: in any situation, have more than one option.  _Always_ work every angle, until you finally act.

"What are you trying to do?" Quinn's voice echoed down the deserted hallway, and Skye started so violently she almost dropped her champagne glass.

Her first thought was that she was glad Grant didn't have a timer; the resulting spike in her pulse would have had him worried out of his mind. "Just . . . looking for a pen!" she gasped, pulling one from the jarful on the reception desk.

Quinn's scrutiny almost undid her. She'd always considered herself a gifted liar—growing up with nuns and a rebellious personality certainly aided in that aspect—but after meeting Coulson, May and Grant, she'd begun to realise exactly why S.H.I.E.L.D. spies were renowned worldwide. After watching the three of them on missions, their covers flawless and effortless to maintain, she felt like a three year old with her hand in the cookie jar facing Quinn.

His eyes were harsh and accusatory; his tone sharper than she'd heard it at the cocktail party. Unsurprising, given that he'd caught her red handed in his own home. Frantically searching for something to tell him, she panicked when he made to call his security. Later, she'd tell Coulson that her next strategy was Grant's fault; hadn't her soulmate told her that the best way to lie was to use the truth?

Maybe not quite so literally, but telling Quinn S.H.I.E.L.D. was listening in certainly distracted him from having her hauled off.

They were halfway up the beach path when Skye's comm whited out.

"I've lost her," Simmons cried over the comm.

"Dammit!" Coulson swore, flicking his eyes back to Ward.

Terror shone in the younger agent's eyes for a single, shattered second, before his face set in determination. "She's fine," he said quietly. "I can feel her. She's fine."

Coulson studied him, then nodded. "Good man."

"What's going on?" Quinn demanded. "S.H.I.E.L.D. got to you?"

Skye nodded, hoping he couldn't see exactly how hard she was clutching her bag. "They picked me up in LA, I helped them out with a crisis; now, they want to recruit me."

"Of course they did," Quinn muttered.

"So I played along," she went on lightly. "Talk about inside info. I have a  _bunk_ on their  _plane._ " It wasn't hard to make that sound cool; she'd never get over the sheer awesomeness of that. "I've been gathering intel, biding my time, until I could become useful. I thought this qualified."

Quinn looked doubtful, but in reality, it was almost the truth. She had intended to bide her time and gather intel, certainly—and would have, if not for Grant. "Why would they trust you? With a covert operation like this." Quinn demanded.

 _Because one of them is my soulmate._ "Something about S.H.I.E.L.D. not breaking international laws," she said carelessly. "They had no other options.  _I_ like to keep my options open."

"We need Skye to come through," Coulson muttered, one eye on his watch.

Grant clenched his jaw. "She will. I know it. Regardless, we can't abort this mission."

"She's our only way in. If she's been compromised—"

"She  _hasn't_ been," he snapped, tension coursing through him. "She knows that we're relying on her to let us in before a patrol comes. A patrol with  _guns._  She won't leave me in danger, Sir, she can't."

Coulson looked distinctly unhappy. "I know what she is to you, Ward, but it's not unheard of for—"

"Stop. With all due respect, Sir, you're wrong. She will come through."

"Their  _profile?"_ She echoed, unsure whether she should be offended.

"You're a criminal," Quinn shrugged. "You have a warrant, somewhere."

"Probably."  _Definitely._

"Very specialised skill set—"

"—I try to stay humble . . . fail." She smiled.

"No family," he said, with the air of one assessing an accident. She felt the smile that had come so easily to her before begin to wilt. "I'm sorry," he went on. "I didn't mean to hit a nerve, but, that is what these people do.  _S.H.I.E.L.D._ They prey on fear, and loneliness, and desperation, and they offer a home to those who have nowhere else to turn to . . . I can offer you something better."

And in that moment, she pitied him. The timer on his wrist—unhidden, she noted—was blank. Whoever they were, out in the world, the perfect match for Ian Quinn's soul had never had a timer.  _You're wrong,_ she thought bitterly.  _I'm not alone. Not like you. I have Coulson, and May, and Fitzsimmons. And most importantly, I have Grant._

"If you stick with us, there's no secrets, no lies, no agenda," he was saying. "You're free, to do what you do. Without Big Brother watching over you. But first, you have to tell me exactly what agenda S.H.I.E.L.D. sent you in here with."

 _Plan, green, drop, pie._ She pulled the contact from her purse and checked her makeup in the small mirror, her stomach clenching when she saw the red read-out. But then, just as she was about to pit it away— _green._ "I was sent to bat my eyelashes," she said smoothly. "Do whatever it took to get in here."

Quinn smiled, not even noticing when she placed the compact on the table.  _Pie._

" _She's in!"_ May's voice came across the comms.

He would have been slightly more relieved, Ward reflected, if he hadn't been ducking to avoid a hail of bullets. Coulson hopped across the invisible property line and called to him. He hesitated, sending one last shot back at his assailants.

"Ward!" Coulson yelled.

He ducked another volley and dove across, just in time to see the fence reform. The bullets that had been aimed at he and Coulson burnt up harmlessly against the laser barrier. "Makes a damn good shield," he observed.

"Come on. I'll look for Dr Hall, down in the lab," Coulson declared.

He nodded, pleased. "I'll get Skye."

"It takes more than a pretty face to disarm me," Quinn boasted.

There was a commotion outside the door and it was thrown open. Two burly men walked through, dressed in the no-nonsense all-black of security personnel.  _Original._ "Sir, we have a security breach," the first declared.

She fought down a triumphant smile. "Oh, the timing of that was  _perfect!"_

All credit to him, Quinn immediately sourced her compact as the source of the breach. He snapped the small transmitter in half, throwing each half across the room.  _Bit late for that,_  she mused. Her levity was cut off when he turned around and aimed a gun straight at her head.

She felt her pulse trip and then begin to race, pounding in her ears.  _Remember what Grant said. Slowly._

Quinn lunged forwards, grabbing her by the throat and shoving her against the wall, the other hand holding the gun inches away from her face. "Don't you get it?" he snarled. "S.H.I.E.L.D.'s against  _everything_ you stand for. They're  _Big Brother._ "

"Yeah," she said. "But they're the  _nice_ Big Brother who stands up for his little brother when he's getting beat up because he ate a piece of cake."

Quinn frowned, nonplussed, but the reference had nothing to do with him.

"You  _kidnapped_ a person!" She shouted instead.

"I set him free," Quinn snapped, backing away and aiming the gun at her once more. "I  _saved_ him. And I could have saved you."

 _Someone already did._ She lunged forwards, grasping the gun and ripping it from his hands. She'd never executed the move that well, and couldn't stop the victorious smile that touched her lips when she aimed the gun right back at him.

"Kid's got balls," one of the anonymous security guys remarked.

"Thanks," she grimaced. "But yuk."

"But do you have what it takes to pull the trigger?" Quinn asked softly.

Her finger itched. She imagined him jerking with the force of a bullet impacting his chest, imagined the shock on the security guard's faces when he slumped, imagined the noise of it, the acrid smell of gunpowder mixing with blood. She imagined seeing Quinn's face for the rest of her life, never letting this moment go.

"Nope!" She grinned. She spun around the pillar and sprinted across the balcony, flinging the hot weight of the gun away.

 _Thank God for pools,_ she thought, and then she was falling.

Ditching her heels in the swimming pool, Skye clambered out—difficult, in her tight dress—and ran through the remains of the party. She paused at one of Quinn's ridiculous, split walk ways before taking the route that seemed to head down to the beach.

Two men approaching in security uniform quickly changed her mind and she pivoted, sopping hair swinging about her face. She stopped, heart pounding, as another man approached from that direction. The three guards converged on her, roughly grabbing her arms.

"Come here," one of them snarled, grabbing a handful of her dress.

"No, no, no, please," she gasped, trying to twist free.

The third guard lunged for her, his hand inches from her neck, and then—relief surged through her. Grant was there, and he wasted no time in engaging the three men. He sent the first to the floor with an inelegant, brutal blow to the head, grabbing him and delivering a fast knee to the groin. The man went down just as a second guard jumped on Grant's back. He received an elbow to the jaw for his trouble, and then a vicious kick. Skye lost track of the rapid exchange of blows, her head spinning nearly as fast as the last man Grant sent summersaulting backwards into the water.

Gasping, and still dripping wet from her improvised escape from Quinn, she ran forwards, barrelling into Grant. He wrapped his arms around her automatically, burying the fingers of one hand in her damp hair and wrapping the other arm tightly around her shoulders. She grabbed the front of his tack vest, ducking her head against the warm, synthetic material.

"Are you hurt?" He demanded, pulling back to assess her for injuries.

She shook her head mutely, looking him over to ascertain he was equally unharmed.

He took her hand, giving is a reassuring squeeze. "Stick close, I'll get us out of here."

The bag shuddered under the force of her punches.

They hadn't got a training session scheduled, but she'd found that the bag helped her to forget the sight of Dr Frank Hall's face as he slipped into the gravetonium. More than that, though, she never again wanted to feel helpless the way she had when the three guards had converged on her on that pathway.

Just as she was nearing her last repetition, she felt a prickling on the back of her neck. She smirked; even super spy Grant couldn't creep up on her with their bond. His steps were light on the stairs as he came to join her, stopping at the bottom to observe.

"You and your brothers," she said, not turning from the bag. "Where did you grow up?"

"Massachusetts, mostly," he replied.

"A house?"

She could hear the frown in his voice. "You didn't?"

"One house." She stopped hitting the bag, stilling it and turning to face him. "The Brody's." She walked to the supply cabinet, taking a long drink of water and beginning to unwind the wraps from her hands. "I was nine. They sent me back to St Agnes' after a month. Said I wasn't a good  _fit."_

"Foster parents," he realised, walking towards her. "Your first?"

"Third," she said shortly. "I mean, it'd happened before, but—this one was different."

He nodded. "Because you wanted them to like you."

"Bad . . . I called her 'Mom' once." She shrugged. "Tried it out. Guess it wasn't a good fit."

She made to go back to the bag, but Grant caught her with a gentle hand on her hip. "I didn't get on with my parents. My older brother hated me. Until recently, the happiest day of my life was when I was fifteen years old—I was sat in a French class in the military academy my parent's sent me to when I was eleven. And suddenly, I felt my wrist heat up, and I looked down, and I saw . . . you. Your pulse. The date we would meet. I watched your pulse for the rest of the lesson, completely zoned out. Thankfully, the teacher didn't notice, but I wouldn't have cared. For the next few years, whenever I couldn't deal with the academy any more, and then later juvie, and then later a damn forest—I looked at my timer and watched your pulse and thought of you. I'm sorry you were alone. I'm sorry I wasn't there for you. But I've loved you from that moment when I was fifteen, and I promise, you'll never be alone again."

To her embarrassment, she felt a tear trace the edge of her eye. Instead of letting it fall, she reached up, her hand warm against the back of his neck, and pulled him down for a kiss. His lips were dry and warm, smooth on her slightly chapped lips. They kissed for an impossible moment, but too short and infinitely long, and then Skye pulled away, stepping fully into Grant's embrace and resting her head against his chest. She felt his heartbeat beneath her ear, and watched his pulse on her wrist where her hand rested on his broad shoulder.

"I love you too," she whispered.


End file.
